Xmen Revisited, Chapter 4:Interlude 2
by Kindar
Summary: A day in the life of the main characters of the story
1. Chapter 1

Henry finished writing the DNA sequence on the blackboard and stepped back. "There, it's all done."

"It took you long enough," said Doctor Gunther Rodrig Fitzgerald, his light German accent not hiding his annoyance.

Henry turned to look at the holographic projection of the older man. "And how quickly did you expect I could to write six hundred fifty eight pairs of Deoxyribonucleic acid." The projection wasn't perfect, Henry's system could create a holographic image so real only trying to touch it would reveal it wasn't real, but the other scientists he helped on this project didn't have a system quite as advanced as his. In the case of Doctor Fitzgerald his blackboard, as well as lab coat and green tie suffered from aliasing, making his image turn fuzzy when he moved too fast. Every so often Henry needed to make adjustment so the writings on that board didn't go completely out of focus.

"Do not listen to de grumpy German, Henry," said Professor Philippe Lenoir with his French accent, "He is simply jealous dat you are able to transcribe de entire sequence by looking at his board only once." Professor Lenoir's image tended to vary from almost crystal clarity to total static. His laboratory was in a remote area and he had to rely on satellites for the transmission. He had warned them a storm was brewing.

Gunther snorted at the implication and Henry smiled. "I could have done all of this ahead of time if you had emailed me the information, or if we worked off a virtual Blackboard"

"You know we couldn't do that Henry," Said Maurice Duprey, Henry's old teacher from his time at MIT, "this project is sensitive and we can't risk anyone intercepting anything. This encrypted network can only be used for live transmission and therefore is secure." Maurice's image was perfect, that was because Henry had mailed one of his older prototypes so they could continue to work together. Maurice was the one who had recommended this method when it became obvious a meeting couldn't be arranged.

"At least that is was the United Nation promises us," said Doctor Victor Von Doom, "I still have my doubt about that." Victor's projection was almost clear as Maurice, only occasional distortion caused by interferences somewhere along the line broke the illusion. Henry was surprised Maurice had been able to talk the man into participating, everything he'd read on him indicated he was rather arrogant and didn't work well with others. "Regardless," Victor continued, "I'm here so we should get to work, I'm sure Mister McCoy has other appointments scheduled for today."

Henry smiled at him, "actually, I've cleared my calendar for this so you have me for as long as you want, and you know I care enough about this project not to charge anything for my time."

Victor smiled back and looked at his watch, "In that case, we have seven hours before I need to tuck my daughter into bed, lets see if that is enough for us to come up with a cure for the common cold."

* * * * *

Scott parked the pickup next to the others and walked to the construction foreman's office; He didn't make it, the man intercepted him before.

"Scott, I'm glad you could make it on short notice."

Scott shook the Native Indian's hand, "not a problem Isaac, what's the problem."

"Follow me," the man led him to the other side of the construction site. There a crane was holding a large metal disk upright. Scott walked around it; it was about a dozen feet in height and one foot thick, in the center was a hole about two feet in diameter. He looked at Isaac with an eyebrow raised. "The hole is supposed to be nine feet in diameter."

Scott chuckled "that's one hell of a screw up."

"Tell me about it, we need to put this down before Friday."

"Once I'm done, how long will it take you to put it in place?"

Before Isaac could reply young man came running their way. "Uncle Zac, is that him?"

"Scott, this is my nephew Eddie," Isaac said when he had reached them.

Eddie extended his hand "It's a pleasure to meet you, sir." Scott shook the hand, a little taken aback by the enthusiasm the man demonstrated. "My uncle said you'd be here today and I was hoping you would let me film you while you work, I have to make a documentary for my film class and I thought that showing a mutant at work would be an interesting subject."

"You," Scott hesitated a little, "want to make a movie?"

"A documentary," Eddie corrected.

Scott looked at Isaac.

"Eddie's a good kid, he won't film anything you don't want him to," the man messed up his Nephew's black hair, "at least not if he knows what's good for him."

Eddie's smiled and rolled his eyes, tolling Scott it wasn't the first time he had to submit to this treatment. "Alright," he finally said, "since your uncle vouches for you, you can do it."

"Cool," the man said and ran off, screaming, "Liz! Bring the camera he agreed to do it."

Isaac chuckled watching his nephew's retreating back, "to get back to your question, we're looking at about eight hours to put it in place, assuming everything goes ok."

"So, ideally, you'd want me to be done on Thursday."

"Yeah, you think you can do it?"

Scott looked the disk over again, and then nodded, "yeah, four days should be enough. But you're going to have to get one of your engineers to mark precisely where I need to cut."

Isaac nodded and turned to leave, but was stopped by Eddie calling his name. The young man was walking towards them as fast as he could, holding a microphone. Behind him a woman who looked to be slightly younger then him tried to keep up while holding a camera in one hand and a tripod in the other.

"Turn the camera on, Liz." He told her and she told him it was already on. He turned to Isaac and Scott and asked, "can you explain why you prefer paying Mister Summer's large fee rather than getting the manufacturer to fix the problem?" and then pointed the microphone at them.

Isaac tensed at the question, "do I really have to be in it?" he asked in a slightly reproachful tone.

"If Scott is the one giving the answer it'll sound like he's just trying to justify it." Eddie replied, "Coming from the foreman it'll sound like an actual business decision."

Isaac sighed, "ok," he said, but the look he gave his nephew said he was going to hear about it later. "If I got the manufacturer to come get it, so they can fix the problem, They'll have to arrange for transport, for something this size we're looking at 2 days minimum, then it'll probably take them a few days to correct their mistake and then they have to get it back here. We wouldn't be ready to start putting it in place until early next week, *if* we are lucky. I have to pay penalties for each day of delay on this project. Scott's fee compared to those penalties is peanuts. Now if you'll excuse me I have to see to it that the piece is ready for Scott to work on as soon as possible." And with that he walked off.

Eddie watched him, a confused expression on his face. After a few second he remembered to tell Liz to turn the camera off.

Scott studied him for a moment before asking, "are you really making a documentary about my work?"

Eddie seemed surprised at the question. "Of course, you don't believe me?"

"By saying I charge a 'large' fee, aren't you making an implication that I charge too much for the work I do?"

The young film maker's mouth hung open in realization. Instead of replying he took out a note book and pen. Microphone under his arm, pen cap in his mouth he wrote 'do V/O for 1 question/ t/o 'large' to make neutral' and then showed what he'd written to Scott. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to come out that way, I'll change it in Post. Is that going to be ok?"

Scott studied him again, he even asked Jean if she could pick up anything from Eddie, but she was too far, and decided to trust the young man, "alright, as long as I get a copy of the final result."

* * * * *

Raven ran through the hallways to catch up to Jean before she made it to her patient. "Jean!" she yelled when she saw her at the end of the corridor.

Jean stopped and waited for her. "Shouldn't you be at your post?"

"I got Gregg to cover for me; I had an idea that might help with Logan."

Jean started walking again. "What is it?"

"You said that part of his mind is fighting you, he knows you can read him and there's something there he doesn't want you to see, right?"

"It's more that he doesn't want to see what's in there, but you're basically right."

"Ok, my thought was that he's used to you, he knows what to expect and he's basically ready for it. What you need to do it surprise him."

Jena chuckled, "and how do you propose I do that, I've tried it before and haven't gotten anywhere."

"Let me go in your place," Raven answered quickly.

Jean froze, "No. No way, it's too dangerous."

Raven turned to face her, "think about it. I'm an unknown, he won't know what to expect from me."

"The last time you visited him he didn't even acknowledged you, what makes you think it's going to be different this time?"

"The last time I didn't have you to monitor him and shut him down if he became too dangerous. This time you'll be there." Raven hesitated a moment, "you *can* shut him down from outside the room, right?" she asked as worry crossed her face.

Jean rolled her eyes, "of course I can."

"Then what's the harm?" Raven replied, smiling wide, "unless you really enjoy your time with him?" she added teasingly.

"Please, if anyone else was qualified to handle him I'd let them deal with the sexual advances." She studied Raven, "alright, but this one time only, regardless of the results you don't get in that room again."

Raven had no problems with that, "are you going to be able to monitor me too while I'm with him?"

Jean shook her head, "no, it's going to take all my concentration to wade through his mind."

Raven nodded satisfied with the answer and they walked the rest of the way in silence. Once inside the room she moved the chair to one of the few blind spots in the room and turned it so she could rest her arms on the back as she sat. She watched him silently for a few minutes. He'd sniffed the air as she entered and that was the only reaction she got from him.

"You know," she finally said, "I can't understand how you can be this calm about all this." He didn't react. "I mean, if I were you I'd be seriously wondering what was going to happen considering you killed eight men, put twenty one other in the hospital, some of whom as still there. It's not like we have to let you go at any time you know."

The man lying on the cot snorted and Raven smiled at having gotten a reaction.

"I've been looking into you, I can't find any trace of your existence, I ran your face through every recognition programs we have and nothing came back, I also ran your finger prints and nothing there too. You don't exist. You're no one."

That comment got him to look at her, and she did the one thing she knew would get a reaction from him. And he did not disappoint her; he sat up on the cot.

She smiled at him, "how does it feel not being anyone."

"I am someone," he said in defiance, "I'm Logan."

"Are you really?" she asked raising an eyebrow, still smiling.

He stood and glared at her, "My name is Logan."

"No, it isn't," she replied flatly.

He tightened his fists on each side of his body and three, foot long, blades snapped out of them. "My name is Logan!"

Raven had seen the claws often enough through the camera that they didn't bother her, in fact they were park of what attracted her to him, but she didn't show any of that. "Logan is just a word you saw," she contradicted him, "when you were found by the entrance of Logan Lake Park. It's not you, you took the word for your name because you're too messed up to know who you really are."

Logan threw himself at the force field, claws first and bounced off. "Come her you bitch and I'll show you who I am," he screamed as he launched himself at the field again, "I'm going to fuck you up till there's nothing left of you!"

The field whined as the claws pushed against it and for the first time since entering the room Raven was worried, she'd heard that sound before when they were running resistance tests on the force fields. The whine indicated that the field was being pushed at its limit and about to fail.

Before that happened Logan became limp and the field threw him back to the middle of the room where he crumbled on the floor.

Jean stormed in the room "That was the stupidest, irresponsible and dangerous thing you've ever done Raven Darkholme. I should never have let you in here with him."

Raven put a smile on her face, showing a confidence she didn't entirely feel. "Did you get anything?"

"Yes, but that's beside the point. The field was about to break and you know it; if he'd been able to fight me off he wouldn't have left anything recognizable."

Raven looked her best friend in the eyes, "I'm sorry, it won't happen again."

"Damn right it won't. I don't want to see you anywhere near this room again, understood." Raven nodded and Jean took a deep breath. "Damn it Raven, he was so angry that I almost couldn't shut him down, he's never been this angry before, lets get out of here."

Raven didn't say anything for a few minutes as they walked away from the room. "What did you get?" she asked once she felt Jean had calmed down.

"A woman's face, I think. When you questioned his identity a few images popped up, I think they're all the same person, but they are too fractured to be sure. I'm going to give them to one of the artists to see if they can do something with them." She took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "What worries me is that for a second he thought you were me."

Raven missed a step, "I was you?" she asked with worry.

"Don't worry about it, it only lasted a second, but I'm wondering if his obsession with me might not be becoming irrational to the point that he's starting to see me where I'm not. Considering how fractured his mind is it might not be too farfetched."

Raven quietly sighed in relief that Jean went down the wrong track. "Let's hope it was just a one time occurrence then."

Jean nodded, worried at what Logan might do if he got loose and started seeing her everywhere.


	2. Chapter 2

Ororo strode into her editor's office for her weekly meeting. "Good morning Margaret," she greeted the older woman as they hugged.

"Ororo, dear, how have you been doing?" she didn't wait for a response, "The preorders on the Princess and the Beast have topped one hundred thousand, it's starting to look like you might have a chance at a best seller finally."

Ororo smiled and walked to the open window; Margaret's office was in an old apartment building with windows that opened. They were always open when the weather permitted, and the weather was wonderful today. She checked the soil in the flower pots Margaret kept on a shelf at the base of the window and found them to be dry. She placed a hand over them and a small cloud formed, a minute later it discharged its content in a miniature rain fall.

"Oh, thanks you," Margaret said, "I couldn't find my water pitcher this morning."

"Liar," Ororo replied sweetly, "you love watching me to this."

"You have to admit it's pretty amazing."

The rain ebbed and the cloud dissipated. "It's completely natural for me." Ororo commented as she turned. She watched her friend remembering how intimidated she had been by her the first time she had walked into this office, almost seven years ago, a stack of papers in her arms. She'd chosen her because the building looked old and romantic on the picture on her website. It told her that the woman who kept her office there was a romantic, and that's who she wanted to work with, not someone in a sterile glass building who was only interested in the bottom line.

She had showed up without an appointment and had waited half the day for this powerful woman to see her. When she had finally asked to see the manuscript Ororo squirmed on her seat while she read the first two pages. She put them down and asked "how serious are you about being published?" Ororo didn't have to even think about it, "extremely," she answered. Margaret had studied her before handing her a business card and telling her that she would call her back once she had read it.

The next week she was back in the office and he manuscript was returned to her, each page littered with red ink. Years on the street toughening her up kept her from showing a reaction, but she was terrified of those pages with almost more red than black ink on them. She nodded to Margaret and told her should would make the needed changes and call her.

Over the next year a story that had started as the fairytale life of an African princess Ororo told to herself to make the nights on the streets more bearable evolved, with Margaret's help, into the story of a woman looking for a way to be herself among African Royalty and prejudices.

The two had had momentous arguments over the story, initially the princess was a light brown skinned woman with white hair who was a mutant. Ororo relented on making her a mutant, but stood her ground on how she looked, and once she showed she could write her as a fully developed person, and not just some wish fulfillment character Margaret stopped bringing it up.

Once the manuscript was finished they started discussing promoting it, and Ororo balked at the thought of parading before crowds of readers who might comments on her book. So Margaret brought in Lindsey, and she became the public face of the Novel.

"Sorry for being late," Lindsey said as she walked in, almost as if the memory had summoned her.

"No worry dear," Margaret responded, "have a seat and we'll start planning the signing tour."

With everyone there they spent the next few hours discussing the cities and stores where Lindsey would appear, as well as some of the ideas Ororo had for the fourth novels so Lindsey could drop hints to the possible future of the princess.

* * * * *

Katherine put on her Bluetooth ear piece and routed the phone call through a new series of hubs and tried again; this was her third attempt. She ended up in the queue again and waited, sipping her coffee while the music played. This time it was less then a minute before someone picked up.

"Good morning," said a cheery woman's voice, "thanks you for calling Engram Financial, my name is Janine, how can I help you?"

"Hi Janine, my name is Bernadette, I work for Detrick Security, how are you today?" she responded in an equally cheerful tone.

"I'm going quite well, can I help you with something?"

"I certainly hope so, we received a call earlier this morning from Kevin Monton, at extension twenty two zero eight in your IT department, the note I have here says that you might have suffered a viral attack. Are you at your computer right now?"

"Yes I am," Janine said after a moment of hesitation.

"Good, here's what I need to you do, click on our start button and then run, then type 'c' 'm' 'd', done? Good," Katherine continued when the other confirmed it. She then gave the other woman a series of command to enter and asked her to give her the responses, which she then entered on her side, getting a little deeper through their security system with each new entry, until she was all the way through.

"There we are," Katherine said, "this is what I was hoping you'd say."

"Is everything ok?"

"Yes Janine, everything is fine, looks like your anti virus software stopped the attack and everything is fine. Thank you very much for your time."

"You're welcome," Janine said before Katherine hung up.

She didn't waste any time moving through the bank's files and system, looking around while trying to find a particular user; when she found him she accessed his computer and typed up an email.

'Dear Mr. Armstrong, This is Katherine Pride, from Pride Security, as you can see since I am sending this from your own email address, I was able to breach your security systems. You firewall is impressive and was able to keep me out, but I was able to talk one of your agent into giving me access to your system without them being aware of it.

'It took me three tries to achieve this; the first two transferred me to your IT department as soon as I mentioned I needed to verify your system. This is the safe thing to do, but you need to put in place a procedure where the other agents will be warned this happened, so that your safety department can be made aware that an attack is happening.

'If you have questions don't hesitate to contact me. Katherine Pride'

She sent the email and leaned back in her chair, that had been a productive morning, she thought to herself. She took her empty coffee cup and went to the kitchen. While she waited for the coffee machine she ran through her agenda for the rest of the day. She was startled by someone wrapping their arms around her and as a reflex she phased and backed through him to get to the door.

"Damn it Peter!" she said when she recognized the wide back, "you scared the hell out of me."

Peter turned and looked at her sheepishly, but grinning, "sorry."

"Shouldn't you be at work?" she told him as he walked to her.

He wrapped his arms around her, "Protesters showed up at the construction site so they had to shut it down for the day." Peter bent down to kiss her, but she stopped him.

"What if someone sees?"

"Henry's locked in his lab and there's no one else here," this time he kissed her, over her rather weak protest. Neither of them was quite sure why they had decided to keep their relationship discreet; Katherine justified it by telling herself she didn't want to have to deal with the jabs about dating a ghost, Peter didn't care he was just happy that she was back in his arms.

"So it's just the two of us?" she asked when they broke the kiss. Peter nodded and she grinned. "You know, the gym is sound proof."

* * * * *

Scott lumbered into the kitchen feeling like a zombie, even wearing his glasses the light hurt his eyes, a side effect of using his power as much as he had this week. He had hoped to be able to sleep in on this last day of the week while everyone was at work, but he'd been woken up at five by Henry pulling heavy machinery to his lab, and after the almost sleepless night he'd had he was in no state to be up.

He made a bee line for the coffee, ignoring Peter at the table cheerfully eating breakfast. He poured himself a cup and after making sure it wasn't too hot downed it, making a face at the bitter taste; he preferred his coffee with milk and sugar. He poured himself another cup and added the needed ingredients to it. He watched Katherine join them, saying a polite hello to Peter before getting a cup of coffee.

"You look horrible," she commented as she looked at Scott.

"And whose fault is that?" he replied bitterly.

"Excuse me?"

Scott looked from her to Peter and sighed. "Look I don't mind if you don't want us to know you two are back together, but if you're going to continue sneaking around at night, can you at least have Peter sneak to your room from now on? Or maybe learn to have sex in silence? I'd forgotten how thin the wall between my room and his was."

Katherine turned beet red and Peter wouldn't look up from his bowl.

"How, how long have you known?" She asked meekly.

Scott chuckled, "how long have we known each other? On the day after my date with Jean I could tell you two had patched things up."

"And then there was the wondrous scent of two people in love," Hendy added as he walked in and went to the fridge for one of the cases of protein shakes he kept in there. "You know Scott, I can install a sound canceling system in your room." He quickly downed three bottles, "Actually, considering everyone here is seriously dating, maybe I should install one in every room."

Scott looked at him, "what do you mean everyone?"

Henry smiled, "I mean even Ororo has someone serious in her life."

Scott was about to say something when the person in question entered the kitchen. Ororo stopped in the doorway when she saw they were all looking at her. Her first reflex was to make sure she had gotten dressed this morning, and not just imagined it. Satisfied that she hadn't made that mistake again she returned their gaze.

"What?" Ororo asked in a demanding tone.


End file.
